


tannis root

by arbitrarily



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Drinking, Deal with a Devil, Descent into Madness, Double Penetration, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gaslighting, Gothic, M/M, Multi, Ritual Sex, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:54:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: They have been married for six months. Together, they live at the Le Domas estate. Each morning she shrugs off the wrongness she wakes to, cold and close as a burial shroud. To herself she repeats the same thing Alex has told her, over and over again:Everything is fine. You are fine. You’re with family now.
Relationships: Alex Le Domas/Daniel Le Domas, Alex Le Domas/Daniel Le Domas/Grace Le Domas, Alex Le Domas/Grace Le Domas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	tannis root

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> Content warnings in end note.

Grace twists the gold band on her left hand. She does it again, and again. She leaves behind a ring of reddened skin on her finger below the knuckle. She does it again, her palms damp. A thump echoes from above—children, laughing.

They were married six months ago. And then, they moved in with the rest of Alex's family. Her family now. Isn’t that what he tells her? When she goes nervous and quakes with something that feels a little too much like terror, he’s there. “I want you to be happy,” he’ll say, and she’ll say she is, of course she is, she twists the wedding band on her finger yet again.

The house is quiet except for when it isn’t. Emilie’s children are rowdy and race forward and back along the darkened halls, Emilie occasionally shouting after them that mommy has a headache, please, for the love of all unholy, _stop_. Charity mutters invective under her breath, most likely hoping someone will catch at least one of her issued insults and bring simmering passive aggression to a full boil. Fitch watches YouTube videos of disaster—diving board mishaps, grislier shotgun misfires, actual fatalities, snuff films the site has yet to flag and take down—with the volume turned up, laughing along with collision, destruction. Death. Alex’s father pontificates and his mother tries to make idle conversation. And Alex. He tries at comfort. She isn’t sure what it is about her that needs that, needs the comfort, but it’s there, coiled defensive and tight inside of her. Expectant. Ready to snap.

The only two who are as quiet as she is are Aunt Helene and Daniel. Daniel drinks. He slouches low in leather armchairs and chaise lounges that date back to Louis XVI, careless with himself, with the house and the items in it, his family, all in equal measure. Aunt Helene watches.

Grace thinks she is waiting, too.

She has to be quiet. She has to be so quiet, but her breath shudders and sticks in her chest and she thinks she might start to cry. She might already be crying. Her body is wet with sweat, cold, makes the lace of her bodice stick and scratch against her skin. She can’t remember which door Alex said. She can’t remember which to open. Her hand shakes as she reaches. She can’t remember—

At night, she dreams.

Alex tells her that’s all they are—dreams.

“There’s nothing for you to be afraid of,” he says to her. It’s easy to believe him, when her eyes are open and he presses his mouth to hers. It’s easy enough to believe him when she is still half-asleep. When she has yet to fully wake.

Immediately following Alex’s proposal, they discussed three things in earnest: whether to fuck in the kitchen (where he had proposed, the garlic she had been sautéing in a pan forgotten and burnt) or take it to the bedroom; whether they should try for another round after; and, whether they should tell his family.

Her answer was yes to all of the above.

“Do you think,” he had hedged, “we should tell them? My family?”

Grace was still smiling. Beaming. She was naked and draped over the bed they shared and when she stared up at the ceiling all she saw was possibility, bright and beckoning, as warm as she felt pressed to Alex’s body. Outside, the sun had nearly dropped below the horizon line and orange and pink and red painted across the wall through the open window.

“Of course,” she said. She rolled onto her side, half on top of Alex, her cheeks flushed, grinning mouth all teeth. “They’re mine now, too, aren’t they?” she said.

It wasn’t until the following morning, when she began to spitball potential plans for the wedding, that she got a glimpse of what it meant to claim the Le Domas clan as her own.

It was too early for too little sleep and the coffeepot spat and gurgled. Grace rubbed at her eyes. “Jamaica,” she said on a yawn.

“What?” Alex’s voice came muffled from inside the fridge.

“For the wedding. Jamaica. Barefoot, the beach, skinny-dipping under the stars. Rum. Lots of rum. It’d be perfect.”

The fridge door shut behind her. “Yeah,” Alex said, as if it was anything but. “That’s, well, yeah. I was gonna mention it, y’know, later. I was gonna tell you, later.”

“Tell me what?” Grace pulled down a mug from the cabinet in front of her and began to pour.

“My family. There’s a lot—the thing you’re gonna have to understand is, we do a lot of things out of tradition.”

“Okay,” she said, both syllables pulled slow and leading.

She felt him at her back, his hands first on her shoulders and then dropped down to clutch at her hips. “Yeah. See. We’re gonna have to get married at the house.”

“The house?”

“My family’s house. It’s beautiful. You’ll like it,” he whispered. He brushed a strand of her hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Grace,” he said. Something hot and wet cascaded down the countertop onto her bare feet. “You’re spilling,” and she was.

The music echoes through the hall, the lights gone dark. Only the glow from the candles offers scant illumination and shadows stretch tall; they loom up the walls. Grace tiptoes quietly, giddy, champagne still bubbling hot in her blood and her belly. She is not afraid. Not yet. The game is just beginning.

She glances back, over her shoulder. There’s no one there. Not yet. She—

Jerks awake, panting. Their bedroom is dark and, she frowns, the bed beside her empty. She sketches her fingers over the bare expanse next to her only to find the sheets cool to the touch. Grace does not fall back asleep. She lays awake, waiting for her husband to return. He doesn’t; she sees Alex next over breakfast with the rest of the family. The coffee is rich and she drinks two cups. She cannot remember what she was so worried about. There’s nothing to worry about. After breakfast, she considers a nap. She walks the dark hall back to their bedroom. She hums a tune, idle and without thought, uncertain where she heard it. She cannot recall the words but for one: _run_.

She hates this house. Grace can admit that now, even if silently and only to herself.

She hated it the moment they moved in. Alex wasn’t wrong: the house is beautiful. Beautiful, but intimidating, as if living inside a museum piece, timeless and priceless and carefully preserved. Grace did not feel as if she fit inside it. And, strangely, impossible to explain rationally, she knew the house felt the same. That it would find a way to make her fit.

Some houses have a personality, as if each person who has lived in it previously found a way to leave their mark. The only thing she has been able to find here are fear and menace. Shadows catch and watch in every corner, doors that once opened are suddenly locked, doors that once opened lead to nowhere—it’s entirely too easy to get lost in a house like this. 

Grace walks the halls alone. This is how she spends her days here, no real intent behind it. Boredom. She’s constantly bored. She has too much time on her hands, though she is never entirely certain of what she does with it. Sometimes it feels as if she is in a fog, unmoored from anything real, and she can’t remember how she used to occupy her waking hours. Sometimes it feels as if she is still asleep and should she take a wrong turn, trip down the wrong hall, she won’t go anywhere—she’ll merely find herself back in their bed, stirring to wake.

Now though, she finds that she has brought herself to a routine destination: the game room. The double doors loom shut before her. She’s not supposed to go in there. Tony is the only one to open those doors. Her routes through the house inevitably lead her here. She doesn’t know why. She never tries to open the doors; rebellion, she used to think, was a natural part of herself. That’s missing from her now. If she thinks about it, if she really thinks about it, there’s a lot about herself that’s missing now.

She doesn’t think about it.

Grace spins on her heel, prepared to wander back the way she came when she freezes. Behind the door there is first a thump and then a scraping hiss. A whisper, harsh and angry—she swears she heard it. There’s someone there. Someone is behind those doors, the family's name carved across them. She looks forward and back, but the hall is empty. There’s no one here. She edges back towards the doors. She presses herself against the carved wood, cool against her cheek, and she presses her ear to it. She listens. Yes, those are voices. She can hear them—someone is in there, and they are not alone. She is not alone. She reaches for the doorknob, curiosity prickling in a way she hasn’t felt in ages, alive and demanding. As her fingers skim cool brass, from behind the door there is another thump followed by a scream. Guttural, animalistic and raw, someone ( _something_ , she thinks) is howling in pain. Grace staggers back, away from the doors, and crashes into the wall opposite and the table set there. She pants, her chest heaving. She snatches up a wobbling and hideous sculpture off the decorative side table she had stepped into. She waits. The scream does not come again. There’s nothing but silence. No one else has come; Grace is alone.

“Get it the fuck together,” Grace mumbles under her breath. She imagined it, that’s all. She imagined it. That scream, that sound, it itches familiar in the darkest corner of her mind. Like she has heard it before. Or, maybe, like she invented it. She sets the heavy sculpture back down on the table. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Still, her fingers curl into sweat-damp fists at her sides. Sharp-eyed, she glares at the doors. She shakes her head. No, she knows what she heard.

She takes a deep breath. Fuck this. She can be brave. This is her house too; she can do what she wants.

Grace steps forward. She throws open the doors.

And—nothing. There's nothing. The room is dark, empty. Unused, the furniture covered in drop cloths, and even from the doorway she can see the dust floating in the air. There is no one here.

Daniel steps into the parlor just as Grace flicks the lighter. She inhales quick and sharp, surprised. The cigarette tastes different—sweeter, nearly dank. Herbaceous and strange. She sucks it down all the same then stands up straight.

She waves her hand at him. “I know, I know, Alex hates it—”

“Hey.” Daniel holds a hand over his heart. A tumbler too full of something amber brown threatens to spill from his grip. They had just finished dinner. Or, no. They had yet to eat dinner. She can’t remember. She takes another drag off her cigarette, finds she doesn’t really care. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” Daniel is saying. He gives the glass another shake then licks up the drink that splashes onto his hand.

He comes closer and then he stills, his face screwing up as if he’s smelled something foul. He is the first easy thing in what feels like days to focus on. Her eyes pass over his face, cataloging everything. There isthe gleam of flop sweat on his ruddy skin, the twitch at his jaw, something raw and real breaking through his usual cynicism. He disguises it quickly, a hasty swallow from his glass, his hand moving to cover his mouth after.

“You really shouldn’t smoke those,” he finally says.

Grace lifts her eyebrows. “And here I thought I had been granted your permission, which, by the way, I never fucking needed.”

Daniel’s hand drops from his mouth. There’s uncertainty on his face, as if he is torn between two opposite posts. He shakes his head and he drinks again. When he looks back at her, he’s much as he was when he first appeared at the door: irreverent, tired. Drunk. “Your funeral,” he says.

Grace runs. She tears through the woods, directionless and chased. Her chest heaves with each breath and she forces herself forward, harder, faster. She can’t stop. If she stops, they’ll kill her. If she stops, she’s dead. If she—

The fence is ahead of her. She throws herself at it, the iron biting cold against one hand as she grabs at it. Her other hand throbs, cradled against her middle, the pain impossible and simultaneously far away, someone else’s problem. Someone else's hand. She screams. She has to get out of here. She has to get out. She has to go, _get out_ , she screams in her mind. _Run._

_Run._

Hide.

She finds the passageway by accident. Or, perhaps, the house has finally chosen to show it to her. Sometimes, she finds herself thinking of this house as if it is yet another member of the family. The head of the family, even. It dictates what happens within it. There is a pulse to the house; she has felt it. She tried to explain this one night to Alex, but all he did was laugh. He had her body under his, in the bed they shared, and all there was between them was skin and flesh. She watched his mouth descend, a knife blade of a smile, before his lips pressed to hers. “I married a mad woman,” he teased, first with his words and his voice and then with his mouth, his fingers, his body pressing into hers.

Now, inside his family’s home, Grace has managed to turn herself around yet again, disoriented and lost. She skulks through the house by day, less bored than she is restless. There is a constant feeling as if she is missing something, a thought stuck right there behind her teeth, always swallowed back down before it can make itself heard.

She doesn’t recognize this corridor, even though it looks much like any other. She steps to the closest door and she opens it. She expects to find it locked—lately, nearly every door in this house is locked—but this one isn’t. The knob turns in her grip, the door creaks open, and waiting before her is a long shadowed hall. She peers into the darkness, her hand braced against the doorframe, uncertain yet curious. The passage before her is unlike the rest of the house: unfinished, exposed wood support beams, cobwebs, musty and hidden. There is a long suppressed spark to her when she makes her decision. She closes the door behind her and she enters the dark.

She flicks her lighter, the small flame lighting her way. She follows the hall, feeling oddly as if she has gotten away with something bad. Forbidden. She bites down on a giggle, but the feeling quickly slips away.

Deja vu stalks her with every step. She’s been here before. Yes, she thinks, and dread climbs the ladder of her ribcage. She has been here before. She grows more certain of it with each step forward. She’s been here before, she thinks. She’s certain of it. She only grows more certain the further she travels into the dark. She can remember tripping over her—skirt? Yes, her skirt. A white skirt, too long, too much tulle, it snagged on errant and exposed nails, she caught the toe of her sneaker in the netting—a wedding dress? Her wedding dress? She frowns, but she keeps walking, the memory slipping through her fingers like—like—blood? There’s a hole in her hand and she’s bleeding through it. No, that’s not right. That’s not—

Grace pauses, her breathing rough. The flame goes out. A headache has begun to pulse behind her eyes and at her temples. She rubs at her head. She tries to remember what she was thinking about. She flicks the lighter. She swats at a cobweb and continues on her path forward.

At the end of the passage there is a door. As she gets closer, she can see there are elaborate symbols carved into it. She squints in the poor light; it makes her head hurt that much more as she tries to decipher them. She looks away, and she forgets they are even there. Instead, she tries the doorknob. Unlocked, much like the entrance. She opens the door only a crack and peers through. Her vantage point is limited, but she recognizes the room on the other side. It’s Alex’s old bedroom.

Alex had showed it to her after they moved in. They would reside together in a different bedroom—more spacious, more ornate, dominated by large overwrought furniture all done in the same dark cherry wood, an equally oversized fireplace taking center stage. The mantlepiece is finely carved, the work intricate and complex, dizzyingly difficult to look at for any amount of time, with a hearth cavernous enough to fit the entire family.

Now, she can hear Alex’s voice in his bedroom, muffled and soft. She grins to herself as she begins to press against the door. She imagines scaring him, something so viscerally satisfying about it it makes her blood boil same as anger might, a vicious glee she does not fully understand yet craves all the same. But she moves no further, the door still parted barely a crack.

Alex isn’t alone.

It’s Daniel speaking now, and she can hear him clearer. He is saying, “Come on, you know we can’t—you know better,” but there’s resignation in his voice, that drunken, slurring lurch, the equivalent to a white flag of surrender. And then, she hears Alex.

“But I love you.”

She knows that tone. She knows those words. He’s used both on her before. To reassure her, to get from her what he wants. She can’t imagine what he might want to wheedle out of Daniel until it’s presented to her. What follows is familiar too, the smack of one mouth on another, the spit-slick sound of kissing. Grace is frozen. She does not breathe. She remains still, as if waiting along the shore as a distant wave approaches. It grows taller and taller, inescapable, before it will finally crash down. She pries the door open that much more, praying for silence, praying they catch her, she cannot decide which outcome would be worse. She earns herself a wider view and regrets it near immediately. Alex holds his brother to him like he wishes to eat him alive. He has his fingers buried in Daniel’s messy curls, pulling first his head back and then pushing him down. Daniel gets to his knees; the wave crashes down.

Grace slaps a hand over her mouth, quieting herself. A silent scream builds in her chest, suffocated by something greater than herself. She can’t understand what she’s seeing. She knows exactly what she’s seeing, but the wrongness of it warps it outside her understanding. _They wouldn’t do that_ , that’s one thing she tells herself. She pulls the door closed, careful and soft, her breath coming fast and near hysterical through her nose.

 _It’s a dream_ , she tells herself. _It’s not real_. That’s another.

She keeps her mouth covered against a hiccup of sound as she walks back the way she came, stoop-shouldered and alone, trying not to cry. A trembling anger creeps through her and she lifts her hand, she combs it through her hair, wild-eyed and betrayed, and she’s been here before, he’s betrayed her before, she has been here, this is no dream, this is really happening—

Grace tries to hold onto it, she tries to hold onto herself, but it’s gone, it slips away, and all she is left with is what she saw: Alex, his cock in his brother’s mouth.

That evening, she skips dinner. She paces their bedroom, panicking. There is something wrong with this house. There’s something wrong with this family. She knew it from the start. There’s no denying it now. She collapses down into an overstuffed armchair and glares. The giant fireplace mocks her, empty, like an open mouth. She can’t stay in this room any longer. She gets to her feet and she goes down to the kitchen.

She finds a red-eyed Emilie there, wound tight as a top. She is picking at an entire pie. Cherry, dark and bloody in the quavering, electric light, and Grace experiences a brief moment of nauseating vertigo, as if trying to graft one image over top another. Violence over calm. Emilie screaming, Grace laughing, the both of them surrounded by the crackle and leap of flame, the spray of blood, splattered along with human viscera. Grace can feel that same laughter bubble up in her now; none of this can be real.

“You’re family’s fucked, you know,” she hears herself say, her voice and her throat raw, as if despite her silence she has been screaming.

Emilie pauses in her feast, her mouth smeared with red. She looks up at Grace with wide, nearly innocent eyes. “They’re your family too.” She says it like she is offended. She pokes at the pie. “Whatever. Shut up. You should eat some of this.”

For lack of anything else to do, Grace does.

She knew there was no one Alex loved more than his brother. He told her as much, back when she had to drag any bit of information from his family out of his mouth, each tidbit hard-earned, as personal and gleaming as a pulled tooth.

Of Daniel, he said: “There's no one I’ve ever loved more.”

“Not even me?” she teased. The wedding was still weeks away and she was happy. Alex’s face went very blank and Grace blamed a great many things for it, but then he smiled. He was Alex. He was hers.

“Of course I love you,” and when he kissed her, she ignored the fact he had not answered the question.

Grace wanders the house, miserable. Her mouth tastes flat and ugly, too much wine at dinner. There is a sway to her step and she is slightly drunk. No, she is very drunk. She is very fucking drunk and she has fucking earned it. She giggles, her feet and her legs going clumsy with her laughter. She starts to sing, the words stumbling into one another as she continues to stumble through the house.

“ _Run, run, run, time to run and hide—”_

_“—run, run, run, and now I’m going to find_

_You scurry off into the darkness_

_Hurry, I’m behind you.”_

She watches them constantly. Grace scouts and discovers all the various hidden passages the house is willing to give up. There are many things this house keeps hidden, and when Grace is thinking clearly, when her vision goes crisp and her mind blade-sharp, she makes herself a promise to uncover every secret the Le Domases keep.

It’s in these back passageways where she spies on them, Alex and Daniel. There is nothing, she has come to learn, they are unwilling to do to each other. Alex is tender with his brother and Daniel is desperate, eager to please, a fact that surprises her. She watches as Alex traces first along the line of Daniel’s throat and then as he squeezes, as Daniel chokes wetly around his cock. There’s no finesse to Daniel’s mouth; she can see the gleam of spilled spit along his chin, the wild red flush that reaches up his face, so similar to how he looks as the night and the whiskey threaten to swallow him whole. Alex brushes his fingers over Daniel’s face. Grace tries to remember the last time Alex touched her like that. Those memories have gone fuzzy and uncertain, too. She presses her legs together all the same, hungry to feel more than she does.

She doesn’t know what she’s feeling. Anger is still there, anger is always there, but at a reach. The second time she spied on them, as she watched Alex open his brother on his fingers with ruthless care, Grace had caught herself as she snarled, “You fucking assholes,” her voice just barely kept to a whisper. They hadn’t heard her, and of course they hadn’t—Daniel was face-first into the duvet bunched at the foot of his bed and the lines of Alex’s back rippled and flexed as he fucked into him. By the time the words had left her mouth, the rage had gone muted within her. Deadened and flat and all she had left was that untouchable curiosity, the desire to watch.

Most days, during afternoons that stretch too long, they retreat to Daniel’s bedroom. That was the second passageway Grace found, the one that leads to Daniel’s room. No one talks about it, no one talks about anything here, but he and Charity keep their own rooms. Charity has come to keep to herself, something strange and high-strung about her lately, her eyes dark with hunted fear. As if maybe she’s seen something she shouldn’t have, too. She will not speak to Grace and Grace does not ask.

But Grace is not watching Charity, she is watching them. Her husband and his brother. Her brother too, she reminds herself. All that is her husband’s is meant to be hers as well. Someone told her that once; she thinks it might have been Alex. She watches, the familiarity of Alex’s body. He has reclined back on the unmade bed and he is no longer touching Daniel. His fingers are curled into fists in the sheets and she can see the line of muscle along his thigh as he tenses, the cut-off noise he makes when he comes. Grace watches; she is the thing that haunts this house. The thought skitters into her mind and leaves just as quick. All that’s left in its wake is red, thick and viscous as blood. As want. She can feel it flare through her even as disgust rises in its wake.

She holds it inside her chest. It slots into the same place she is sure where love is meant to go. It aches. Water drips steadily from the faucet into the tub. The bathroom is as dark and gloomy as the rest of the house. Grace slips her hand under the water. Her fingernails scrape against her inner thigh, the bite of them sharp against the swell of her labia. She rolls her hips as her fingers delve in quick, her flesh hot, the hint of pain better than simple pleasure. Her cunt clenches already at the brief contact. She sinks lower into the water; her fingers press deeper. She thinks she might slip under. Thinks she might already be under. She’s drowning, and she doesn’t even know it. She only feels alive when she watches them. And even though her body is separate, even though she stays hidden, she can’t help but feel as if she is a part of them, too. Her fingers work harsh against herself, her thumb rubs at her clit too hard, just over the line of pain, and she twists the two fingers buried within her, rougher, as if the hand between her legs is not her own but someone else’s. Alex’s, touching her in a way he never has. Daniel’s. The both of them touching her together. She could have them together, same as they have each other. There is a third hand, ghastly and inhuman, and yet it still belongs to Alex and to Daniel. To this family. To her.

With a choked wail, she resurfaces. Water splashes over the rim of the tub and across the tiled floor. Grace heaves and coughs, her cunt throbbing and pulsing as she comes.

It’s in the hidden passageways of the house where memory occasionally finds her. Always brief, like fingers passing over the back of her neck, fingers reaching for her hand. Beckoning. Grace fails to follow, tripped up by herself, a fog inside her head. The things that are brought to her—small snippets of moments that add up to less than nothing—are terrible. Violent; they make her blood sing.

Instead of remembering, she listens to Alex and Daniel. She learns the sounds one body can make around and against, inside another. The sounds one can pull from another—rough and needy, panting breath and names said like talismans. Horror and envy slink and coil around each other in Grace’s gut, uncertain if they might be one and the same.

Sometimes they talk about her. She is in the room yet still outside it. Her name is always said with pity, the guilty acceptance that comes after the crime committed. When they speak of her it is always in relation to time—namely, that it was running out.

“He gave us a year, Alex. He gave Grace a year. How much longer are you—”

“She doesn’t have to know.” Alex’s tone is pleading, and she listens as he inhales sharply. The floorboards creak as he presumably gets to his feet. “I don’t want Grace to have to know.”

Daniel laughs, incredulous and dry. She can hear the thud as a glass is slammed down onto a table, then liquid as it pours. “Alex. She’s one of us. You made her one of us. There’s a price, and you fucking know—”

A flash of panic lights up inside of Grace, her chest tight, fear rushing in its wake, and then—gone, along with the words they said inside her head. She is in their bedroom, and she does not know how she got here.

Most days now she walks as if through a dream. A nightmare, night spilling over into day. She does not feel as if she can contain herself. She chain-smokes the cigarettes she keeps in the beautiful silver case. She does not remember where it came from. She thinks it was a gift. The family name _Le Domas_ is inscribed into the metal along with fine and looping filigree. It’s not hers; it is now. Each cigarette tastes sweeter than the last, sweeter than the wine she drinks at dinner each night, red dark enough in the minimal candlelight it appears black, inky in the heirloom glass. The meat is always rare and she eats ravenously. She is neither asleep nor awake. She is neither here nor there.

She is not dead, but deep down, she knows: she’s not alive either.

Blood gurgles out of Daniel’s mouth as he lifts a hand to his neck. He’s bleeding, he’s dying, her hands shake as she reaches for him, for his own hands clutched around the wound, lost in all that blood. He’s dying, he’s—

Inside her. He’s pushing inside of her, making her ache at the stretch—no, it’s Alex, it’s her husband, it’s his hands hot and familiar on her. It’s both of them. It’s neither of them, a stranger, his body in her bed, his body pushing inside of her, she tries to push at the body, she tries to pull it closer, it feels like her own body has been taken, she has been taken, but she’ll allow it, she will let her body receive, like a secret passage opening, she will let this happen so long as they let her be a part of this, so long as they make her come, she’s so close, she—

“Grace. Grace, wake up. You're dreaming. It’s only a dream.”

Alex’s hands are on her. She is laying in their bed. She’s wet between her legs, an unanswered throb pulsing and spilling. Her neck is hot and she has sweat through her nightgown. Alex smoothes a hand over her, down to her chest, and she shivers.

“Grace,” he says again. “You were dreaming.”

“What did you do?” she hears her own voice say, distant and faraway.

She is seated at the dining room table with the family. A fire crackles in the hearth and the room is lit by candlelight and flame alone. Grace glances around the table but no one glances back. It has become harder for her to ignore—that creeping feeling of wrongness. Living in this house is as if living in the belly of a beast. She is prey, already caught and pinned. Already eaten, but she’s still waiting for teeth.

She shakes her head, tries to rid herself of the thought. She picks up her fork, then stares down at her plate. For a brief moment, all she sees is blood. Gore, spilling over the rim of the plate and into her lap. Grace gasps. She jerks back from the table with a clatter, her chair tipped over, her fork noisily colliding with the fine china.

“I’m sorry,” Alex says. She lifts her head in surprise, but he’s not speaking to her. He addresses the table, his family. “She’s not feeling her best.” Grace glares. She doesn’t move as his chair scrapes against the floor, as he gets to his feet and he comes to her side. She bats his hand away.

“Jesus, I’m fine,” she snaps.

The only ones at the table who watch her are Aunt Helene and Daniel. The rest ignore her. The rest eat. Daniel watches her with pity, but Aunt Helene—her eye is sharp, and there it is again. That hunger that Grace has known she's spied before. She’s seen it in Alex. She knows it. She recognizes it. And, if she wants to be honest, if she can be, she has seen it in her own reflection, too.

_These rich motherfuckers are fucked up._

For once, the voice in her head sounds like her own. She clings to it.

Grace makes a decision. She is going to take charge. She’s fucking better than this sleepwalking, sad rich bitch routine. She wants that clarity, those brief brushes of time when she knows herself, to last. She stops smoking, she stops drinking. She stops eating the food they serve her.

She doesn’t trust anything in this house anymore. She doesn’t trust anyone.

After a week, she has not lost any time. She can account for it all and she does, notes scrawled to herself in a notebook she hides under a loose floorboard in their bedroom. Memory has yet to return to her, fully and for keeps, but she is Grace, she tells herself. She’s got this.

“Darling, I can’t help but notice you’ve become a different person these days,” Becky says. It’s before dinner, a dinner Grace will not eat. Each night Grace raids the kitchen for pre-wrapped and processed food she eats ravenously in secret like an animal.

Grace smirks, unable to help herself. “I’ve been me.”

“Hmm,” Becky hums. “I’ll tell you what, all I want is for my son to be happy and for you to be happy.” Becky’s hand is clawed and bony when it pats Grace on the knee. She withdraws just as quickly. “You know what’ll fix you right up? Lift you out of that funk of yours? A baby.” Becky smiles to herself. “I want a grandbaby.”

Grace doesn’t move. No one in this house ever asks her what she wants. They tell her.

Becky sighs. She hands her a cigarette. “Go on then,” Becky says, as if to prove Grace’s point, "I know you want one.”

Grace’s fingers pass over hers as she takes it from her.

_Blood cracked skull Becky on the floor Becky bleeding Grace over her Grace with her blood and her hair on her hands Becky is dead Becky’s dead she killed her she killed her she killed—_

A flame flickers in front of Grace’s face.

“Go on then,” Becky says again. Grace can hear the paper as it starts to burn, she can smell the cloying stink of the herbs rolled inside. It’s not tobacco; she can’t believe it took her so long to notice. She takes the lit cigarette from Becky. She grounds it out against the old warped wood arm of the antique chair she sits in.

She climbs. Her muscles twitch and shiver, overworked and exhausted, the pain in her hand nearly enough to distract her, to encourage her to keep going. She climbs. She will pull herself out. The stench surrounding her overwhelms and she fights the urge to gag. She fights. She’s so close to the top. She is nearly there. The ladder breaks beneath her and she loses her footing. She scrambles to hold fast. She will not fall. She cannot fall. She raises her hand, she reaches—

She screams.

Grace walks the house, intent. She thinks she is looking for an explanation.

As she winds her way through the house, something at the front door catches her eye. It’s a red light, small but glowing. Grace frowns. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen that before. She does not think her mind let her see it before. She steps over to the door and she tries the handle. Nothing. It will not move. She forces it again, and still. Nothing. The door is locked. She goes into the next room and tries a window, only to find that locked as well, the same for the one after it. Something has begun to tighten in her chest she dare not name. She rushes into the hall and rushes down into the room waiting at the end. The conservatory. Hot and humid, the plants wilted, condensation drips down the glass walls and ceiling. She rushes through, batting at fronds and leaves, scattering petals in her wake. She reaches the door, the one that leads out onto the lawn. The glowing red light is there too. Her palms sweat. The latch will not give.

She bangs her fist against the door, once and then again. Again. She snarls behind her teeth, a string of profanity that rises in both pitch and terror.

Grace stills. She takes a fearful step back. She is trying to think. She has to think. When was the last time she went outside? It had to have been recently, right? She tries to picture herself, out on the lawn, over at the stables even, wandering down the drive to the gate. She can barely picture the gate though. She can barely imagine any of that. She tries to conjure the feeling of the sun on her skin and that feels very far away. Her breathing has gone rapid and funny, and she twists at her wedding band, idle and nervous. When was the last time she left this house? When was the last time she saw a person other than a Le Domas?

She can’t remember.

She can’t remember her wedding either.

She remembers the dress. She had been so fucking happy when she found that dress. When she tried it on and spun in front of the multi-paneled mirrors in the dressing room and felt as near to perfect as a girl could ever hope to feel. She was getting married, she would have a family, she had this dress. She can’t remember ever actually wearing it. Not really. A snagged hem, her sneakers and dirty bare ankles. The back of it ripped open on wrought iron, the white ruined and stained dark.

When she tries to push harder at memory, it’s the same as against any locked door in this house. No entrance, only frustration. Fear. She knows something is waiting on the other side. She knows, she fucking _knows_ , there’s something Alex isn’t telling her.

“What do you remember? From our wedding?” She asks him the question before bed. She is already in it, the sheets pooled around her waist, her light hair spread over the pillow. She knew Alex before she married him and she has learned him in a different light since. She can recognize the tensing of his muscles, the tightness to his shoulders and his upper back, the way the carriage of his body shifts before he tells a lie. He tells her so many lies, more through omission than anything else. Alex pauses in undressing. He turns around to look at her, his fingers still at his buttons. She had caught him earlier that day. No, catching implies action on her part. Interruption. She found him earlier that day. He had Daniel on his knees. It’s that she sees when she looks at him, the expression on his face, slack in a way she does not think she or anyone else has ever earned. She wants to hate him for it, wants to hate Daniel even more, but she cannot find it inside of her. All that’s there is dark, empty. There’s nothing there to hold to, and she knows—she’s meant to hold to them instead.

“It was the happiest day of my life,” Alex says. Like he means it. Like she can hold onto him. Her resolve slinks away the longer he looks at her.

“Yeah,” she says. “Right.”

She is in the billiard room. Everything in this house, everything to this family, is a game. Especially her. She cannot catch her breath.

Daniel stands with his back to her. She can smell the whiskey from here. “This doesn’t end well for you,” he says.

Daniel says to her: “I just don’t want to be the one who serves you up.”

They have been married for nearly a year. Grace has had enough.

She bursts into Daniel’s bedroom. She enters without knocking; what more could he possibly have to hide from her? She’s seen everything.

“What the fuck has your family been doing to me?”

“Look who finally woke up.” Daniel rubs at his mouth. There’s no hint of surprise to him, almost as if he was expecting her. She watches him as he gets to his feet. "What has Alex told you?” The question comes out wry and more than a little leading. He looks as exhausted as he does drunk, though if Grace has come to learn anything about Daniel (anything more than his mouth on Alex, his mouth on his brother, on her husband), it’s that both present the same on his face.

But the answer is nothing. Alex has told her nothing. Her head has cleared and memory is returning, small piece by small piece, creating a picture of unimaginable horror. Alex told her nothing. He warned her of fucking nothing. She can remember, back before a wedding that sinks like a giant black hole inside her, each time he mentioned his family, he would say he hated them. That prepared her for nothing. Not for this house, and even less the people in it. There’s a fine line between having a family with questionable political opinions that you fight with every Thanksgiving and a family like his. They're wrong. She can't deny that now.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore.” It hurts her throat to say it out loud. “Daniel, please.”

Daniel’s throat bobs as he swallows. His hand is gentle when it cups her face, the gesture brief. His fingers drop and drag along her jaw before they fall away. “Grace. It’s all real.”

She inhales sharply. “What’s—what the fuck’s happened to me?”

“He loves you so much he made a deal. He changed the terms.” There is a darkness to Daniel’s face she has never seen before. Her chest tightens as do her hands, into fists at her sides. She steps back from him. Her jaw trembles.

“The terms of _what_?”

“I told you, Grace, a long time ago. My family believes in tradition.” She doesn’t know when Alex came into the room. She doesn’t turn, not yet. She can’t look at him. She can barely listen to him.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Her voice has gone shrill and her fingernails bite into the palms of her hands. “What did you do?” she asks Alex, but her gaze is still fixed on Daniel.

“I made a deal. Mr. Le Bail’s terms may be ironclad, but he’s not against renegotiation.” Her patience frays as Alex begins to ramble, about this Mr. Le Bail, their family’s benefactor, nervous in a way that reminds her of the Alex she first fell in love with. The Alex who proposed to her and the Alex she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. Grace whips around to face him.

“Oh my god, did I ask for a fucking history lesson?”

Alex nods, almost as if he is abashed. “I was afraid, Grace. I didn’t think you’d understand.”

“So you lied to me?” she nearly shrieks. She wraps her arms around herself, all but shivering with rage.

“I didn’t want to lose you! Not then, not now. Not ever.” And then he finally tells her what happened. He tells her everything she has been unable to remember. The night they married, they played a game. They played _the_ game: she drew the Hide and Seek card. She remembers what that means, doesn’t she? It’s all coming back to her, isn’t it? They had to kill her if they wanted to survive. They tried to kill her. And yes—it is all coming back. Grace feels sick; she’s not crazy, she isn’t crazy, Daniel was right—it is all real—but she has to be crazy, she has to be if she’s managed to live with all of this, if she can stand here and listen and not combust into a million pieces. “I made a deal, at the last minute. Dawn was nearly on us. Do you remember that? I’ll spare you the details.” He doesn't need to. She can see it all. She was on the table, she was screaming, everything hurt, everything ripped open and raw, and it was Alex holding the knife. He steps towards her. She takes a step back. “He agreed. Mr. Le Bail agreed.” There’s pride in Alex’s face now, a cruel mismatch against the guilt and remorse harbored beneath it. “He gave us a redo, of sorts, without forfeit. He would let us, all of us, start again. He said he would let you forget, that we could be happy. We could be a family. We would be together, and I only had to give him one thing.”

Alex pulls her towards him.

“He let you be one of us,” he whispers.

Panic spikes through her. She feels alive, she feels more herself than she has in months. Since she married him. She is vibrating with fear. She can finally recognize her situation for exactly what it is and what it has been from the start: she’s trapped. They’ve trapped her. She smacks at Alex’s shoulder.

“What did you agree to? What did you give him?” Grace’s voice cracks.

“Baby,” Alex says. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” He cups her cheek, same as Daniel had done. When she tries to rear back from him, she is met with the solidity of Daniel behind her. Daniel’s hands settle on her upper arms and grip. Alex comes closer. His fingers dig into her jaw. His forehead brushes her, nearly tender.

“What did you do?” she begs.

He lifts his head and tells her.

They’re in their bedroom, all three of them. Together.

“It’s an honor, Grace,” Alex says. Her body shakes with the effort of standing still and not fleeing. Not dropping to her knees and begging him with every fiber of her being to be better than this. Better than his family. Beneath that though, there’s a different engine powering her, heating her. Anger. Absolute and total rage. She leans into it; if she closes her eyes, she can see the world they left behind. Red; she can see red.

His mouth is nearly against hers when he speaks again. “You’re so lucky,” he says, and finally, she laughs. Rude and braying, insulting even, before her laughter goes sharp with hysteria, brittle as broken glass. It’s better than screaming, that’s what she tells herself, but she can feel that building in her, too, so she gives in. She screams hard enough her throat burns.

“You feel better now?” Daniel asks, sarcasm laced through every word. She had nearly forgotten he’s in the room with them, too.

“You’re the future, Grace,” Alex had said, before he led her to their bedroom, a lamb to the slaughter. “You’re the future for not only the Le Domas line, but for Mr. Le Bail.” He brushed back a strand of her hair. He passed the pad of his thumb over her mouth, her lips trembling. “You’ll give us an heir,” he said, and she had laughed then, too. She laughed even as Alex explained the new terms: Mr. Le Bail gave them a year. He would erase the night that had already passed, he would bring back the dead, he would waive the required sacrifice of the bride insofar as the bride was able to give him what he wanted the most.

“You’re all fucked,” she says now, a brief snort of laughter that dissolves just as fast. Her throat still aches.

“I don’t make the rules, Grace,” Alex says. In the candlelight he looks at her soft-eyed and apologetic, and it’s the very last thing she wants from him.

She stares back at him. She really looks at him. She tells herself she knows him now. “Yes, you do. People like you always do,” she says, and then she steps over to the bed. “It’s what you people think you can do to everyone else, isn’t it? Make the rules, change the rules. Use us and fuck us and what does it even matter. You get what you want.”

“You’ll get what you want, too.”

He isn’t wrong. Maybe that’s the part that hurts the most. If she had a choice, would she have chosen this? Is she choosing it now? Alex called it an honor, but she thinks it’s something more than that. That it can be. The flames in the fireplace at the foot of the bed leap to life as if in reply.

She looks back to the both of them. “Well? Are you going to take what you fucking want or what?”

There is a ritual for this, and of course there fucking is.

It is not only the flesh of a Le Domas that is required to bring a little Le Bail, Jr. into the world, but the blood. Grace is propped up naked on their bed and Daniel sits behind her. He holds her between his legs, his hands branded tight around her upper arms as if he might have to hold her down. He won’t. Alex draws his body over her. Her body receives him as he pushes into her, and this is her husband, sex with him should feel more familiar than this, but now—now it doesn’t. His cock stretches her, an aching burn as he arches his back, thrusts in deeper. Grace bites down on the inside of her bottom lip. She gives them this, and she can have what she wants. But what does she want? Family—always that. But there is another answer that lingers beneath her skin, rising now hot and eager to the surface.

Power.

“Do it,” Alex says, but he’s not talking to her. He’s talking to Daniel.

She catches the glint of the blade in the candlelight when Daniel draws it from the bedside table. He takes the knife and she sucks in a breath, waiting. She tips her head back, watching Daniel, Alex paused, his cock seated inside her.

She watches as Daniel cuts his palm open. He hisses and the blood begins to drip. Before it can slide down the side of his hand, down his wrist and his bare arm, he holds it over her mouth, forcing her to drink it. She can feel his breath hitch against her back as the wound presses against her lips, the teeth behind them.

“Open your mouth,” Alex whispers. “You have to open. You have to drink.”

Grace meets his eye. She drags up every ounce of contempt, of fear and hatred and rage she has felt inside this house. Inside this marriage. She rolls her hips as she opens to Daniel, opens to the both of them, and coats her tongue with Daniel’s blood. His fingernails nick and sting against her arm as he grabs her, and when he groans it trembles against her spine. He tastes hot, vital, and she can feel something dark and unknowable bloom and open deep within her. 

She feels Daniel's wet palm smear down her chin, to her neck. “Good,” Alex says, and it is an offer of quiet encouragement, unclear if it is meant for her or his brother. She thinks of each time she spied on them, what they did to each other. He used that same soft praise on Daniel then, too.

Maybe that's why she can still barely look up at Alex. He lets her take her fury out on him. Daniel lets her do the same. As Alex fucks her, as Daniel holds her steady, she slaps at them both, her fingernails scratching at any bit of skin she can find—Alex’s neck, his shoulders, Daniel’s tensed thigh pressed against her side. They take it. They take it until she feels it leave her. No—it does not leave. It is not gone. It has become a part of her. Her body relaxes back against Daniel, it takes Alex, clenching hot and wet around him the same as flesh would take a blade, and they both must take that as invitation—Alex fucks her that much harder and she can feel the open, needy press of Daniel’s mouth as it drags down her throat.

She lifts a hand to her husband. He’s still Alex. Still her Alex, she thinks. The man who shares the same ring on her finger as her. Yet, how can he be? He lied to her. He brought her here. He’s monstrous, a stranger. She thinks she might be, too.

“Is he in you?”

Alex frowns in confusion, his hips losing their rhythm as he looms over her. “Who?”

“Mr. Le Bail,” she whispers. The name feels wrong, gruesome in her mouth. Worse than Daniel’s blood, still cloying on her tongue like hot metal.

“Grace,” Alex says. Tenderness, that’s what he gives her. He kisses her and she knows he can taste his brother in her mouth. “He always was.”

When she comes, it feels the same as being knifed through the gut—merciless, devastating. She knocks Alex onto his back and she crawls on top of him. Daniel doesn’t move, to hinder her or to help. She locks her hands around Alex’s throat, threatening but not squeezing. Daniel’s blood is smeared over her skin and despite everything, everything hidden and hideous and wrong, she thinks it looks right. It feels right. They already share the same blood.

She leans over her husband, her hair falling into her face, over his like a veil. “I want you to understand. You won’t lie to me anymore.”

“Grace.”

“No more fucking lies.” She pulls back from him. She spreads her legs wider, muscle and tendon pulling beneath her skin. She slots his cock back inside of her. It feels right, too. “I want to know everything.”

She slides her mouth over her husband’s in a parody of a kiss. Daniel is watching them; she can feel his eyes on them. She straightens her spine, and Alex’s cock shifts inside her, stealing her breath.

“I make the rules now,” she says.

It’s too much to continue fucking him, yet somehow, simultaneously, not enough. She wants more. She wants to be ripped apart, made whole again. She wants to be the one to tear and shred. She remembers everything now, blood tacky and sticking to her fingers, her skin, the terror she feels each day in this house known, sensible even. What she can’t make sense of is the want that beats inside of her, matched in the pulse throbbing hot and wet between her legs. There is an empty void in her, a widening maw that she needs to fill.

“Come here,” Grace says, the words shaped into a sibilant hiss. Daniel obeys. He was, she thinks, waiting for her permission. She groans at the thought. He comes to them, a hesitant eagerness to him as he kisses first Alex and then her. His hands overlap with Alex’s on her hips, they press down her spine, changing the angle of Alex inside her and making her tighten and grasp, nearly sigh. Daniel was wrong, she thinks. Alex didn’t do this for her—not only for her. He did it for the both of them. He did it for what he calls love.

He did it for family.

Grace presses a hand down in the center of Alex’s chest, stilling him. She reaches for Daniel, naked as the both of them. His cock leaks into her grip as she wraps her hand around him. She meets Daniel’s eye. “Fuck me,” she says.

“Grace,” Alex groans beneath her.

“Didn't you hear me? I make the fucking rules. And I want both of you.”

Daniel’s hand is still bleeding and she can feel the weeping wound against the back of her thigh as he tries to position her better. His fingertips brush against her cunt, where she is already stretched around Alex. He touches Alex’s cock too and Alex is too far gone, unable to stop the buck of his hips, pressing himself into her. Grace leans down, her chest flush with Alex’s. Her mouth is at his ear. She makes a quiet falling sound as Daniel works first one finger inside of her and then another, both alongside Alex’s cock, stretching her open.

“I know what you two do when you’re alone.” Her teeth catch against Alex’s earlobe and he twitches, tries so hard not to move as Daniel pants behind her, fucking her with his fingers.

Alex’s eyes are dark and so is the twist of his mouth. He knots his fingers in her hair, he watches his brother behind her, sighs with her when his fingers slip wet and dripping from her cunt. He waits until the blunt pressure of the head of his cock presses against the both of them before he says anything. “Good," he says. "I wanted you to see.”

Grace wails. Daniel’s cock slides into her alongside Alex’s, and it’s too much, it’s everything. It’s perfect. She cannot move, trapped between the both of them like this. Her thighs tremble and shake, her body held up solely by their hands and their weight. She feels entirely consumed but also as if, finally, she is the one with teeth. She is the one who eats.

Over her shoulder Daniel and Alex kiss, mouths open and greedy, and Grace takes a shuddering, pained breath in. She is not at their mercy, she tells herself. Not anymore.

“What did you do?”

“ _I promised him you._ ”

Grace wakes in the night between them. She rises. She has to crawl over both Alex and Daniel to get out of bed. They sleep nested together like animals, damp pale skin pressed to damp pale skin, reddened where hands and teeth have left their mark. Blood from Daniel’s hand is still streaked on both the sheets and her own flesh. Her body aches; it no longer feels only her own. She has been rearranged. She goes to the window to overlook the grounds. She twists the wedding ring on her finger. All she sees is her own reflection cast back at her. This is her house now.

She goes down to the Great Hall. The doors to the game room are open and waiting, so she steps inside. The table at the center of the room gleams, the chairs uncovered, as if expecting a party. At her presence, the fireplace leaps to life.

“Whoa,” she mutters. “Hello to you, too.”

She watches the flames lick and crackle. On the mantle sits a pack of Marlboro Reds and a cheap plastic Bic lighter. She picks both up; her fingers tear at the cellophane. She smells the cigarette before she lights it—tobacco, cheap, familiar. She inhales deeply. She stands before the fire, naked, and she tries a smile on for size. She tries to feel it, but it is very far away. She stretches the corners of her mouth, she curls her lips back, bares her teeth, predator not prey. She drags her hand down from sternum to stomach; she takes another long drag off her cigarette. Her mouth cuts open, flashing teeth stitched into a cold grin as she exhales. It’s fine. She’s fine. There is nothing to be afraid of. She has the devil in her now.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is homage to _Rosemary's Baby_ , from which I ripped off a great deal of this lol (including the line, "this is no dream, this is really happening.") I had so much fun writing this and so much fun playing around with your prompts and letter. Happy Darkest Night, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Content warnings: violence on par with canon; non-consensual drug use and non-consensual memory alteration; gaslighting; explicit sibling incest and infidelity; voyeurism; implied (or, was it imagined?) dubiously consensual somnophilia; dubiously consensual ritual sex with the express purpose to conceive the Antichrist; satanism, generally.


End file.
